We were lucky to catch up with Roberta Levitow recently and have shared our conversation below.

Roberta, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

In August 2019, I found myself out of a job. I had spent almost 15 years at the Sundance Institute Theatre Program designing and implementing international exchange programs in East Africa and the Middle East/North Africa. The change wasn’t a shock – our Artistic Producing Director had recently moved on to run the MacDowell artist retreat. Several of us on staff suspected that the program itself was likely to get axed, as it did two years later. But…still. Losing a job that felt like the perfect culmination of my 45-year career in the theatre was profoundly disorienting. I was approaching 70. Could I afford to retire or was I really heading back into the job market? Was it time to reinvent myself (again) or time to adapt to changing times and circumstances?

My first-generation American Dad was born in Boyle Heights, and I grew up an L.A. “Valley Girl” in the safe bubble of post-World War II suburban America. But my Polish-Jewish grandparents shaped my imagination; their lives — surviving pogroms and worse in Europe, then leaving their families behind to immigrate to the United States — taught me endurance. The contrast between our perspectives taught me that the world holds stories both seen and unseen, and that powerful outside events can transform vulnerable lives. My grandmother was a wonderful storyteller although her tales were often tragic. I’ve always considered her my inspiration to enter the theatre.

I became a storyteller myself as an actor, singer, director, teacher and producer. For many years, I directed original plays that engaged with contemporary themes and events. I challenged myself to look directly at the outside world, no matter how frightening or crazy. My grandparents taught me to face the world with my eyes wide open, which can be energizing but also scary and confusing at times. Especially these days, real life can feel overwhelming.

It is hard to be a beginner again at 73. After all, I had become “expert” enough in theatre to teach on faculty at UCLA and Bennington College. I felt respected by my colleagues in the field – in the United States and around the world. I’d been an honored guest at theatre festivals in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and most recently Saudi Arabia.

Inevitably international travel to a new country and culture makes one an automatic beginner. I was used to treading humbly with an open mind and heart. Still, picking up my French studies before I went to teach on a Fulbright grant at the National University of Theatre & Cinematography in Bucharest, Romania took me to another level of beginner’s anguish. I could be eloquent in English! But I had to push myself through so many awkward moments as my French competency increased – step by wincing step. I’ll never forget sitting in an advanced level course at a French language school in Paris, me in my middle 60’s, surrounded by a class almost entirely composed of seemingly-fluent, articulate 18-year-olds.

There’s a Zen Buddhist concept of “Beginners’ Mind” that I’ve come to cherish, even if I can quote it with barely superficial knowledge. It has to do with remaining humble and open to all experiences. Some days it’s so hard not to feel embarrassed when asking a beginner’s question. Some days it’s hard not to want to remind someone that I too was once accomplished in my field. But most days I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the journal I am writing of my life – just another chapter in an evolving story.

Roberta, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

From observation and experience, I’ve learned that there’s no single pathway into a life in the arts. I started drawing in childhood and performing in junior high school. When I went to college, I fell head over heels in love with theatre and political activism, often singing protest songs with my guitar. When I graduated from Stanford University (1968-72) with a BA in Drama, I found myself completely at a loss. I dabbled in film-making and got accepted into the USC Film School; I thought about graduate school and got accepted to DePaul University in Chicago. Instead of either reasonable and exciting option, I packed my bags for New York City, which was just too cold for a California girl like me! Finally, after a couple more years of uncertain choices, I settled back in California, at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA) company in Santa Maria, and from there a career began. Even though my path was often unclear, my sense of purpose remained – to marry the arts and activism. I believed then and I believe now that the arts play a decisive role in building-up the muscles of the soul.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

For much of my adult life, I’d long nurtured a fantasy scenario. I was born into the family of an animation cartoonist. My father Abe Levitow was an animator and animation director for characters like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry and Mr. Magoo. My mother Charlotte was also an artist. They met when she was working in the Ink & Paint Department at Warner Bros. From infancy my sister, brother and I were handed pens and drawing notebooks. Our family spent Sunday afternoons walking through museums. My Dad taught animation classes at L.A.’s Chouinard Art Institute (a precursor to the Otis College of Art & Design). During high school and college years, I got jobs in various Ink & Paint Departments in Hollywood, tediously filling colors inside those black-inked lines. When both my parents were gone, I sought solace in Otis Extension courses in anatomy, drawing, oil painting, even Old Masters’ Techniques. Later, I sought out workshops in traditional icon painting. For me, drawing was always therapeutic. And, sometimes, I even liked looking at the results! I always told myself that I would take up painting in my retirement years.

During a 2014 trip to Jerusalem, I wandered into the Hasan Al-Ansari & Sons icon shop on the Via Dolorosa. I found myself alone with one of the proprietors of the shop speaking about the abundance of ancient and new icons surrounding us. I confessed my love for icons and he said that he too loved and, in fact, painted them. A Muslim man, he offered to teach me, a Jewish woman, how to “write” traditional icons. With a plane ticket home the next day, I had to decline becoming his apprentice. But a seed was planted. Returning home to Santa Monica, I researched and discovered workshops offered by the Los Angeles-based Icon Guild of Southern California. In one workshop, I painted with Benedictine and Trappist monks while listening to Gregorian chants in silent retreat at the New Camaldoli Hermitage on the Big Sur Coast. I fell in love with the theatrically narrative figures, the symbolic vocabulary, the beautiful colors, and the ancient technique of egg tempera painting.

Then came March 2020 and the COVID crisis. My group of climate artist-activists were forced to cancel the conference we had planned around theatre and the climate crisis in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Instead of welcoming our granddaughter to come with me to volunteer at the conference, my husband and I put her on a plane back to her home in New York – with a baggie containing a mask, plastic gloves, and wet wipes. My husband and I were confined to our Santa Monica home, looking for ways to keep ourselves relatively calm and healthy. No job, no conference, no theatre.

One day I wandered back into the storage room that I sometimes used as an art studio. I found a treasure trove of icon painting supplies: pigments, brushes, gold leaf, gesso boards…. All I needed was eggs, white wine and distilled water. So, I started to paint – about the pandemic. Since icons are historically religious expressions, I had studied icon “writing” in religious contexts. But the almost medieval experience of the COVID “plague” inspired me to take those techniques into a contemporary direction. Between 2020 and 2021, I painted a series of six contemporary secular icons that I called “Staging Patience: A Pandemic Journal.”

As I painted, I had the magical sense of falling through the looking-glass of my life. I was pulling together all the elements of my artistic life from childhood to elder-hood. I was storytelling on boards, there were cartoon-ish aspects in the simple outlines, the technique invited me to fill in the colors within black-inked lines, my director’s eye could create theatrical mise-en-scene tableaux, the immediacy of topical contemporary references added both sharpness and whimsy, and all the elements could live in dream-like, surreal imaginary worlds beyond the physicality of the stage.

Having been a professional in the theatre world, I determined to take my artwork seriously and applied to exhibitions and professional training programs. Beyond my expectations, I have been invited into a community of super-smart, talented and knowledgeable visual artists and advocates. I feel very grateful for the generosity of so many of these courageous, committed and experienced practitioners.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Making art is one of the best ways I’ve found to make sense of what I see. From an early age, my artist parents showed me how I could channel my emotions into doodles on a piece of paper. Throughout my life, I’ve used art making as the way to find out how I’m feeling about things – about relationships, sure, but especially about the events taking place around me. Whether I was making theatre, singing songs or painting paintings, I have used my art making as a way to record, examine and bear witness to life.

The slow process of egg tempera painting gives me time to reflect on contemporary subject matter – like the COVID pandemic. I love matching the timely with the timeless. In my paintings, I can construct theatrical tableaux, much like I did as a director on stage. I use egg tempera paint and often gold leaf on panels to merge historic symbolic elements with contemporary secular ones. When I work on a painting, I often find myself surprised or saddened or laughing at what I see. The end result provides me a kind of peaceful reassurance that we can and will endure through these collective challenges. My goal is to create a space for others to reflect on these symbolic, surreal and even whimsical images, and to invite the viewers to make their own sense of our often-senseless world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.robertalevitow.com
• Instagram: @rlevitowart

Image Credits

1 La Sainte Corona (or the Transfiguration) painting by R Levitow, photo by R Levitow, 2020
2 Concedo Nulli (I Concede Nothing) painting by R Levitow, with R Levitow, The Ebell of Los Angeles, CA exhibit “A Woman’s Place”, photo by husband Mitch Greenhill 2024
3 Studio portrait of R Levitow, photo by husband Mitch Greenhill, 2024
4 Les Brancardiers (The Stretcher Bearers) painting by R Levitow, in show at Sanchez Art Center exhibit “Left Coast Annual Juried Exhibition” * Juror’s Award of Merit, Pacifica CA, photo by Tejinder Greenhill, 2021
5 Postcard for “Made in California” Brea Gallery, Brea, CA, featuring painting by R Levitow, photo by R Levitow, 2023
6 Solo show at ARTISANA in Sebastopol, CA, featuring artist R Levitow and Tejinder Greenhill, photo by husband Mitch Greenhill, 2022
7 Solo show at COLLAGE: A Place for Art & Culture, San Pedro, CA, works by R Levitow, featuring friend Jack Landrón, photo by R Levitow, 2024
8 Banner in front of Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hillel for Artists for Humanity exhibit, featuring R Levitow, photo by husband Mitch Greenhill, 2024
9 Boney Mountain Vision Quest and Lysol Lady paintings by R Levitow, with artist R Levitow, Los Angeles Artists Association Gallery 825 exhibit “Glossary”, photo by husband Mitch Greenhill, 2023
10 Studio Visit Magazine #51 issue, selected work Lysol Lady by R Levitow, photo by R Levitow, 2024
11 The Bottom Line painting by R Levitow, Orange County Center for Contemporary Art exhibit “Art with a Message”, photo by R Levitow 2024